Classical Spies

American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece

Susan Heuck Allen

Publication Year: 2011

“Classical Spies will be a lasting contribution to the discipline and will stimulate further research. Susan Heuck Allen presents to a wide readership a topic of interest that is important and has been neglected.”
—William M. Calder III, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Classical Spies is the first insiders’ account of the operations of the American intelligence service in World War II Greece. Initiated by archaeologists in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, the network drew on scholars’ personal contacts and knowledge of languages and terrain. While modern readers might think Indiana Jones is just a fantasy character, Classical Spies discloses events where even Indy would feel at home: burying Athenian dig records in an Egyptian tomb, activating prep-school connections to establish spies code-named Vulture and Chickadee, and organizing parachute drops.

Susan Heuck Allen reveals remarkable details about a remarkable group of individuals. Often mistaken for mild-mannered professors and scholars, such archaeologists as University of Pennsylvania’s Rodney Young, Cincinnati’s Jack Caskey and Carl Blegen, Yale’s Jerry Sperling and Dorothy Cox, and Bryn Mawr’s Virginia Grace proved their mettle as effective spies in an intriguing game of cat and mouse with their Nazi counterparts. Relying on interviews with individuals sharing their stories for the first time, previously unpublished secret documents, private diaries and letters, and personal photographs, Classical Spies offers an exciting and personal perspective on the history of World War II.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page, Dedication Page

Acknowledgments

I drew my inspiration for this project from the lives of my professor John Langdon Caskey and my friend Clio Adossides Sperling.
I acknowledge with pleasure the generous support of a senior research
fellowship from the National Endowment of the Humanities in 2006, a
Seeger Fellowship at Princeton University’s Program in Hellenic Studies in
2007, and an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the...

Contents

Abbreviations

Prologue

it was ouzo hour. Archaeologists gathered for the nightly ritual as the
sun set across Vourkari Bay on the island of Kea. From the dig house veranda, you could see past Cape Sounion and the Aegean all the way to the Peloponnese with each rocky spine deepening to violet across the blood orange sky.
The evening was deceptively casual, the society highly strati‹ed, a lieutenant parrying and flirting with younger diggers while others silently...

1. “On the Rim of a Volcano”

October 28, 1940, dawned clear and bright over Mt. Hymettus. Nine men gathered on the summit, though it was a military zone and Greece’s
fascist dictator, General Ioannis Metaxas, had just declared war. Rodney
Young dwarfed the others. Once the Cary Grantish darling of New York
debutante balls, Young had spent the last eight summers excavating in and
around Athens with this band of men. He stood...

2. Leaving the Ivory Tower

Young was the first American who volunteered to fight alongside the
Greeks against Mussolini. However, the xenophobic Greek government refused to accept foreigners in the army and turned him down. Instead of sulking or remaining inactive, Young considered relief work. American School archaeologists had engaged in it since the nineteenth century, including men he knew, like Carl Blegen and Bert Hill.

3. Flight

For a fortnight, Elli and Clio Adossides persevered. Elli drove the
wounded men to the Koritsa hospital and checked on Young. Occasionally, she continued to Florina, where she placed some on night trains for Salonika. There was no heat in the cars, but men with gangrened or frozen feet and legs felt less pain without it. Sometimes Clio went down to the dressing stations to receive the wounded men. Otherwise...

4. From Relief to Intelligence: Forging a “Grecian Formula”

After almost a month at sea, Young arrived in New York in early
September and presented himself for registration, but the draft board examined and rejected him as 4F because of his wound. So he indexed Agora finds with Frantz in Princeton and devoured the New York Times for news of Greece, but the bleak reports made him “want to play the ostrich and not think about it at all.” The British blockade...

5. Recruiting the Four Captains

By the end of may 1942, Rodney Young had submitted a list of names
to Amoss of people who had lived in the Eastern Mediterranean and knew its languages. Because the job required loyalty and a delicate balance of teamwork and self-reliance, he chose archaeologists he knew well, Americans whose linguistic abilities, ingenuity, integrity, and personalities fit the needs of the Greek Desk. His once and future...

6. “Playing Ball” and Striking Out with the British

By January 1943, the playing field had changed.More than two years had passed since the world focused on Greece’s heroic stand against the Axis. Before El Alamein, Donovan had seemed willing to grant anything and everything Amoss wanted, but after the invasion of North Africa, America’s priorities lay elsewhere. Churchill and Roosevelt met at Casablanca and decided to intensify Allied operations in the Mediterranean.

7. “Preparing the Underground Railroad”

Rodney Young finally reached Cairo after a two-and-a-half-month voyage. He had left Washington with high expectations and promises of support, but it was May 19, 1943, over a year and a half after Pearl Harbor.¹ Rommel’s Afrika Corps had surrendered in Tunis, and Cairo was celebrating the victory of Operation Torch and the capture of 240,000 Axis soldiers. Roosevelt and Eisenhower...

8. “Entering the Danger Zone”: The “Samos Show”

In early September 1943, the Aegean remained quiet.¹ While Young
scrambled to prepare missions and waited for Dow to arrive, Sperling went so deep undercover that he “almost vanished,” and Caskey expanded his empire along the Turkish coast. The Emniyet had granted Caskey secret
harbors further north, from Chandarli (“Boston”) to Aivalik (“Portland”). Further north, “New Orleans”...

9. “Oriental Endurance” and the “Somber World of Snafu”

10. Operation Honeymoon

In early April 1944, Young felt that the archaeologists were “gradually
being overcome by a sort of creeping paralysis.”No one felt he had any authority. In Cairo, Young was coping with the aftermath of the mutiny and the Greek political crisis. To discover the true intent of EAM/ELAS, SI would partner with the Labor Desk. Together they would send the Pericles mission. It would be the first to enjoy...

11. The Birds Began to Sing

After a year in Cairo, Young was sick to death of politicking. He remained deskbound, his elbows sticking to the table, his flock flown to
Greece, his office flooded with their cabled chatter. Thrush continued to be most prolific, then Gander, but Dodo (Despot mission to Athens), Grackle (Settler to Athens), Loon (Oracle to Amphissa), Seagull (Crayon to the Cyclades), Pheasant (Phalanx to Salonika),...

12. Liberation and the “Dance of the Seven Veils”

As young prepared to leave Cairo, the Red Army’s advance catalyzed events in Greece.Word that Soviet troops had trapped the German Black Sea fleet, captured the Ploesti oil fields, and secured the surrender of
Rumania alarmed the Germans. They convinced Hitler to approve a secret
withdrawal from Greece before they, too, were trapped.
Liberation had begun. The Evros guerrillas declared August 29 their D-Day:...

13. Things Fall Apart

On December 3, 1944, the winter sun rose over a ravaged Athens. Avenues empty of cars brimmed with impoverished citizens peddling American cigarettes, pushing overburdened carts, or just standing around. The once jubilant residents who had celebrated the end of the Nazi occupation wondered if life would ever be normal. As winter approached and conditions deteriorated, elation gave way to fear of...

14. “Playing a Dangerous Game”

While the world focused on the cease-fire on the western front, Rodney
Young fought for his life in Greece. On May 5, 1945, the vessel carrying
him to Syra to relieve the UNRRA’s Cyclades regional director capsized and most passengers were lost at sea, including a member of the Swedish Red Cross. After five hours in the water Young was saved, but the article recording it barely made the New York Times.

Epilogue

During World War II, occupied Greece fell under the umbrella of the Middle East theater of operations, which the British controlled. Thus, Britain’s imperialist vision dominated activities in this sphere, and American foreign policy deferred to Britain’s. However, during the postliberation period, the American foreign policy makers slowly shed the shackles that bound them to England. They were able...

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